World Evidence, Pricing and Access (EPA) Congress 2024: Navigating the conference program

14 Feb 2024

Written by Laura Dormer, Editor

Events coverage Health economics Health technology assessment Market access Medical devices, pharmaceuticals and vaccines Real-world evidence Value assessment World EPA Congress

The World Evidence, Pricing and Access (EPA) Congress 2024 is taking place in Amsterdam, The Netherlands on March 12–13, 2024, and will convene over 210 speakers exploring current themes in market access, pricing and evidence.

As the World EPA Congress 2024 approaches, here I highlight several pivotal sessions I intend to attend, providing insights to help you navigate the comprehensive multi-track program.

Global perspectives

With an international audience, several keynotes at the World EPA Congress 2024 will explore topics from a global perspective, including:

Overcoming the access barrier: inclusive growth around the globe – Claus Runge, Bayer (Tuesday March 12)
Changing landscapes around market access and pricing: a global perspective – Vivian Mendonca, Menarini Group (Tuesday March 12)
Trends for affordable access: reducing disparities in global inequity – Jayasree Iyer, Access to Medicine Foundation (Wednesday March 13)

Evidence generation

Across both days I plan to attend several session across the Evidence track which covers patient-centered outcomes, evidence generation and real-world evidence (RWE). By providing a more holistic understanding of healthcare interventions, integrated evidence generation is becoming more and more crucial for regulatory decision-making, market access, and overall patient care. Several sessions will explore this topic including:

Integrated evidence approaches: opportunities and challenges – Elena Panitti, Novartis (Tuesday March 12)
Patient centred integrated evidence generation – Agathe Le Lay, H Lundbeck A/S (Tuesday March 12)
Integrated evidence generation planning: Driving launch success and reimbursement – Rosemary Jose, OPEH Health (Wednesday March 13)
Evidence generation for policy development: alleviating health disparities – Neeta Tandon, Janssen (Wednesday March 13)

With RWE being more widely accepted to support access decisions, Shaun Rowark (NICE) will provide the health technology assessment (HTA) perspective by discussing ‘Are we making an impact with real world evidence?‘, whilst Trine Pilgaard (Pfizer) will explore ‘Using real world evidence for support of patient access‘.

HTA

Enacted in 2022, the new EU HTA Regulation aims to reduce duplication efforts by national HTA bodies by providing a framework for joint clinical assessments and joint scientific consultations that assess the safety, and cost-effectiveness of new medicines in Europe. The regulation represents a significant shift in industry processes and is expected to have broad-reaching impacts, including increased patient access to treatments across Europe and formalized collaboration among stakeholders. Several sessions will explore the EU HTA and its implications. Leading the discussions, on Tuesday March 12, I’m particularly looking forward to the panel discussion moderated by Herbert Altmann (Cencora) on ‘EU HTA: How to ensure stakeholder alignment on a national level to accelerate broad patient access?’. Other sessions include:

Impacts of EU HTA regulation on the German AMNOG – Kati Sternberg, Abbvie (Tuesday March 12)
Framework and implementation for HTAR regulation – Marco Marchetti, European Commission & National Agency for Regional Care Services (Tuesday March 12)
How to avoid nasty surprises: predicting PICOs for your EU JCA Dossier – Gavin Outteridge and Catherine Chamoux, AESARA (Wednesday March 13)

Other sessions at the World EPA Congress 2024 will provide insights from the HTA perspective, including ‘Minding the evidence gap: a day in a life of a HTA assessor‘ from Zinajda Zolic-Karlsson (Norwegian Medicines Agency) and ‘HTA submission pitfalls: through the lens of an assessor‘ by Andrew Mumford and Jonathan Gibson (Initiate Consultancy). Shaun Rowark (NICE) will also speak again, discussing how NICE use real-world data in HTA in the session ‘Use of data for HTA: NICE’s digital journey‘.

Looking to understand more about Joint Clinical Assessment in Europe? Read this Deep Dive ‘Implementation of EU Joint Clinical Assessment – ensuring readiness amongst industry and other local stakeholders‘ to learn more.

Market access

The market access track will explore several themes including early access schemes, access in low- and middle-income countries and investment strategies. The panel discussion on Tuesday March 12, moderated by Julien Patris (argenx) will examine ‘EU healthcare reforms and implications for local market pricing‘. Later, I’ll be attending the talk by Jonathan Pearson-Stuttard (LCP Health Analytics & Royal Society for Public Health) who will provide an interesting discussion exploring ‘Prescribing equity: Life sciences’ vital role in addressing healthcare disparities‘.

Artificial intelligence and digital technologies

AI technologies have wide-ranging applications in health care, with the potential to transform accuracy in data analytics and gain deeper insights for evidence generation. During the final keynote on Wednesday March 13, Chris Mancill (Bristol Myers Squibb) will moderate a panel discussion, ‘Ways that AI can transform pharma market access‘. Later that day, Lori Klein and Sylvaine Barbier (Putnam) will help the audience learn more about the applications of in their session, ‘Leveraging large language models with real world data to generate more comprehensive insights for biopharma’.

Building on her session from last year’s conference, at the World EPA Congress 2024 Rossella Di Bidino (Fondazione Policlinico Universitario Agostino Gemelli and The Graduate School of Health Economics and Management) will discuss ‘HTA for artificial intelligence: where are we now?‘ The session will update the audience on the AI-MIND project and explain the newly launched EDiHTA project dedicated to developing the first European digital HTA framework.

Frameworks will also be the topic of discussion by Bogdan Muresan (Astellas Pharma) during the talk, ‘Market access for digital health assets: creating frameworks for digital health technologies‘.

Advanced therapies and rare diseases

Ensuring individuals with rare diseases have equitable access to novel and emerging treatments requires collaboration among pharmaceutical companies, healthcare professionals, patient advocacy groups, regulatory bodies and HTA agencies to create a supportive ecosystem that fosters research, development, and evidence sharing. Two tracks at the World EPA Congress 2024 are dedicated to advanced therapies and rare diseases with a broad range to sessions exploring many topics.

I’m particularly interested in the sessions that will discuss innovative pricing and access models, including, ‘Soliris was underpriced? Exploring alternative pricing approaches for orphan medicines‘ (Emilie Neez and Richard Sear, Dolon), ‘Pricing approaches for gene therapies: future innovations‘ (Lara Pippo, CSL Behring) and ‘What have we learned and the future outlook for risk sharing agreements for ATMPs‘ (Farzana Malik, Independent Market Access Expert).

Understanding the patient perspective in rare diseases and how patients can access novel advanced therapies is also key in this field. Stefaan Fiers (Takeda) will delve into this topic on Tuesday March 12 in the session, ‘Driving solutions and understanding barriers for patient access in rare diseases‘. Several speakers from patient groups will also deliver sessions, and I’m particularly keen to hear from Robert Burley (Muscular Dystrophy UK) talking about, ‘The patient journey of accessing new treatments‘ and Juliette Vila Sinclair-Spence (Acanthamoeba Keratitis Eye Foundation), who will moderate the panel discussion on ‘Barriers and solutions to medicine access for patients with rare diseases‘.

Meet The Evidence Base team at the World EPA Congress 2024

I will be in Amsterdam attending the World EPA Congress 2024 along with Phil Garner (CEO) and Jo Walker (Publishing Director). If you’d like to schedule a meeting to meet with Phil, Jo or I to discuss contributing to The Evidence Base or learning about our sponsorship and partnership opportunists, please contact Phil directly.